July 15, 2014

t-shirt reloaded

There is something else I made last week. I just didn't blog about it yet because the items themselves aren't exactly interesting to look at. It is interesting for me to have them though.I re-made my knit sloper. I had been putting that off ever since I made my new slopers. After all, because jersey is stretchy, most of my old t-shirts still fit. However, some (especially those made from less stretchy varieties of jersey) are now a bit snug across the chest and others suffer from the fact that many kinds of jersey are less stretchy vertically than horizontally. Their center front pull up and, as a result, the side seams pull to the front. It's not noticeable when I wear the tops tucked in but eh... It's not how it should be.Before showing the top, I should explain that this knit sloper, in both the old and the new version, is not designed with negative ease. It is meant as a starting point for drafting all kinds of jersey garments for normal daily wear and is derived (in a fairly arbitrary way) from my normal bodice sloper. If I'd be making a tube top or a fitted tank top, I would use the body sloper from my lingerie patterns, which is drafted with negative ease (which reminds me: I haven't re-made that one yet).I first tried the new sloper (with its full, high neck) in some ugly old knit fabric and adjusted it to get the fit right. Then, I decided to make a simple, basic t-shirt variation to see if it really worked.

Which became this modest black V-necked number. The fabric is a bit of eco-cotton left over from an old collection of M's. As such, it contains very little lycra (2%, if any) and is a kind of faded black (it was difficult to achieve saturated dark colours with early fully eco-friendly dyes) but it's also really nice to the touch.I think this top will be a nice simple basic, once the weather cools down.Then, with some fabric left (but not enough for a similar top) I made another top.

This one, with its wide low boat neck. I own two tops with similar necklines, one with short sleeves and one with three quarter length ones. The first one was one my first makes in jersey (from a Burda pattern which I lost a couple of years ago), sewn on my old Toyota sewing machine which ate fabrics like that. I just used straight stitching to limit the amount of damage the machine would do. As a result, it's far from perfect but it still gets worn. The other top is even older: Bought at H&M years ago, it is one of the few RTW items I still wear.If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've seen both of these tops more than once because I often pick them out to complement 'statement' skirts.So, obviously, I needed a new version. This time from a pattern drafted by me, based on that new knit sloper.So, that's what I did. I've already been wearing this top and I love it. I think I will need several more in different colours and with different sleeve lengths...